I’ve been hearing a lot lately about conferences and conventions for bloggers. After all, the International Food Blogger Conference took place a few weeks ago in Seattle, BlogHer 2010 was a couple weeks before that at the beginning of August and SOBCon Colorado was just this past weekend. Whether you cringe at the thought of going to a conference or you love to get out from behind the computer and meet other bloggers in the industry, it’s important to recognize when these meetings are happening. Whenever influential individuals in a community meet to discuss and connect, you can expect things to shift, people to try out new ideas, positions to be challenged and considered. It’s always interesting to see which ideas planted during conference discussions can bloom out throughout the community at large, leading to some great and innovative blog entries. However, it can be painstaking to try and keep track of which conferences are drawing near, especially as we begin to look forward to the holiday season (yep, I said it!). We’ve taken the work out of knowing conference dates by composing this neat little list of those that are happening between now and the end of the year. While we tried to stick to conferences that are happening domestically, one or two international conferences were snuck in there as well.

These are all the conferences happening in the next few months, as far as I was able to find. It is likely that those signed up for the first conference mentioned above will be especially appreciative of the list format and those who are organizing the final one will not be best pleased to be referred to as a conference, as they are branding their experience as an “unconference.” Still, these are meetings to be aware of and to join into, if you’re so inclined. While many of the conferences slotted to happen within the next several weeks are already sold out, a number of those also have waiting lists or ticket exchange forums. The conferences further down on the list are also still accepting new participants.

So if you’re a frequent conference go-er, share some of your experiences with us! What kind of advice would you give to a newcomer? Which conferences have been your favorite? What moves a conference up in your esteem? Are there any other conferences that should have made it onto our list? Finally, does anyone know of a conference using Plancast.com? If you do, let us know!

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Yann's work is found at the intersection between rich media and PR 2.0, Social Media. Ideally, I work on both sides with clients. Transmedia is the natural evolution of the current marketing, social media landscape.